


The Tracks from the Hearth

by Chromat1cs



Series: Basingstoke Diaries [12]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Christmas Christmas, Christmas Eve, Editor!Remus, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, MWPP, Marauders' Era, Mechanic!Sirius, Post Hogwarts AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2019-02-09 00:56:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12876732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromat1cs/pseuds/Chromat1cs
Summary: For one evening every Christmas, the fireplace lets a different sort of warmth in.





	The Tracks from the Hearth

_24 December, 1977_

Sirius stands back to look at his handiwork—a reshuffle of the furniture that makes his arms ache with the effort of expending more magic than he’s been used to for the past several months. The table is switched with the couch so somebody doesn’t end up with their arse in the icebox or one leg in the sink, transfigured oblong with more chairs to seat seven instead of the usual two, with a lopsided centerpiece thickly garlanded by fir and holly. The still-sparse little flat smells faintly now of the earthy greenery, which is due in part to the massive and off-kilter tree leaning beside Remus’ desk like a curious onlooker. The little piles of poorly-wrapped boxes he’s cobbled together for Remus sit underneath it, looking abashed beside the tidy little stack of pristine gifts Remus has prepared for Sirius in return. It’s almost ridiculous, Sirius thinks now and often, how exaggeratedly they’ve grown into their own inner archetypes over seven years of playing complement to one another.

This will be the first Christmas of Sirius’ that isn’t a dolorous pageant of his ex-family or the overbearing warmth of a dinner with the Potters, and he tries not to let on how excited he truly is. Independence is a heady high.

The hearth flares suddenly and ushers Remus into the flat, laden with groceries and stopping with a squawk as he nearly careens into the newly-positioned table. 

“Jesus, Sirius—!” Remus protests aimlessly while Sirius erupts with a laugh he can’t quite hold back. Remus re-juggles the bulk of paper bags in his arms and surveys the sitting-cum-dining room with a perfunctory sweep of his eyes—raises his eyebrows and sniffs a short hum of Remus-brand approval once he recovers himself; “You were busy.”

“I didn’t want Alice crammed ‘round against the pantry again, Frank already thinks I’m more than a bit of a todger,” Sirius explains as he hefts away one of the grocery bags from Remus’ left side. 

“Oh stop, Frank thinks you’re lovely.” Remus sets the food on the tiny expanse of kitchen counter beside the sink. He draws out his wand and enchants the food into the cupboards and refrigerator with neat gestures, his face writ into a portrait of brief and handsome concentration that makes Sirius’ insides squeeze with affection. 

“I wouldn’t go _that_ far, but I think he’s finally forgotten the time I accidentally ruined his and Alice’s first date at Honeydukes by vomiting on his shoes,” Sirius japes, wholly conscious of the way joking about lighter things makes the churn of volatile attraction in his guts feel less present. He still can hardly believe he gets to regularly share a bed with Remus Lupin—Remus had used the second bedroom for about a week after moving in before the unspoken collapse of that boundary, caused by the perfect glory of sleeping together without having to be secretive about it. Sirius adores it just as well as his cock, but it does riotous things to his heart that he’s never quite had to deal with before. He’s been steadily falling for Remus for years, clearly, but he was always able to ignore it somehow. From so near, the evidence is getting hard to sweep away with his schoolboy strategies of boisterous distraction. 

“Well we’re feeding all of them,” Remus says with an air of announcement, enchanting a massive hock of ham out from the last bag, “so I think they’ll be appreciative regardless.”

“Merlin, Moony, did the wolf slaughter a boar last month? Where the fuck did you find that?” Sirius gapes as Remus sets the ham in the sink and rolls his eyes, an ever-witty glimmer of green.

“Har har, you ponce. There’s a butcher’s at the Top of Town.” Remus nudges Sirius with an obstinate bunt of his hip as he sets to preparing the ham for roasting. Sirius resists the flash of an urge to lift those hips onto the counter and shag Remus silly, pretty wit and all, in a reprisal of yesterday afternoon. 

Confusing muddle of feelings aside, Sirius has enjoyed and continues to enjoy the process of making a little life with Remus—in whatever sort of capacity they may end up tolerating one another as time spirals ever forward. He knows “flatmates” is a different sort of label for them to wear, but it’s clear they both have similar ideas about hosting five of their closest and only friends for a Christmas Eve feast, after which Sirius plans on being far too drunk by the end of the night for the privilege of not having to get himself home afterwards. He’ll already be there.With Remus. 

An hour later, interrupting a fervent kiss against the haphazardly-shut refrigerator for which Remus nearly drops the package of cranberries in his hunger to clasp at Sirius’ waist, the Floo blazes with just enough space of warning for Sirius to step back and give both men two precious seconds to readjust the fall of their hair and the twist of their shirt hems. 

“Happy Christmas!” The annunciation belting from James like the old story of Mary and her angel Sirius had read idly once in an old bible, sweeping into the flat through the fireplace like the gust of a gale. Lily follows quick on his heels to beeline to the kitchen—she mirrors James’ arrival with double-handles of liquor with her own heavy dish of something that smells like home and cinnamon. Sirius catches the way Remus’ eyes light up as the essential lord of this little flat, the warmed kitchen his domain and the presence of friends stoking the brilliant light behind his eyes like kindling, and tucks it away tightly in his memories.

Sirius feels that Christmas could finally, for the first time in his patchwork and sodden life, become something lovely.

—

_24 December, 1978_

Sirius isn’t _sad_ that James and Lily have decided to do Christmas alone this year. He’s over the fucking moon that James actually had the balls to stick to it and get married, but there’s a little part of him sulking in the back of his mind now that two of his best mates have a wholly legitimate excuse to spend time together that doesn’t involve Sirius Orion Black III. Fucking esquire, esquire, esquire.

Sirius likes to sulk best with gin. 

“Oh Merlin, you’re already drunk,” Remus sighs as he appears in the hearth, hair ends and coattails settling with the dissipation of travel. He had spent the day with his parents, insistent to bring Sirius as well but _No, I know you want time with your mum, I don’t want you feel split with me there;_ it had hurt to watch Remus go earlier, but it was the right thing to do. The other right thing to do was to begin drinking just after tea and keep it steady since. 

“I started without you,” Sirius sighs, extending the bottle to hold it there patiently as Remus undoes his scarf and coat to hang them on the rack by the front door. Remus accepts it with grateful fingers, tense with stress, and downs a long pull as Sirius watches with affection humming along in his veins. 

Remus pulls his lips across his teeth for the snarl of the drink when he finishes and glances at the record player that currently wails strings and a madness of brass. “Who’s this?”

“Rimsky-Korsakov, old Russian Muggle. _Scheherazade,”_ Sirius drawls. “Happy Christmas, Moony.”

“Happy Christmas, Pads,” Remus says gently as he sinks himself down onto the sofa next to Sirius. Sirius watches him with soft intent and wonders if he also feels the yawn of emptiness in their flat this year in contrast to the wonderfully dizzying overlay of life and laughter from last Christmas. There is much to be wary of this year on the flip-side of the pure joy from James and Lily’s wedding in the summer—Remus’ mother has taken a sharp downward turn with her illness, a longstanding and bitter journey for her that has been going on since Remus was only 12; an increase in mutterings from the Ministry with all the wartime bullshit happening outside the boundaries of what Sirius cares to be worrying about; the loss of Sirius’ brother several months prior that he nearly refused to acknowledge even then, only getting it truly out of his system by weeping briefly and bitterly while elbow-deep in an open Volkswagen engine one afternoon in Mort’s empty garage. 1978 has been a mess. Sirius is glad to see it go. 

“How’re your parents?” Sirius asks. Remus requests another draught of gin with a touch of delicate fingers and drinks again before nodding distantly to himself. 

“Da’s fine. Mum is...fighting.”

“That’s good!” Sirius’ exclamation carries a bit more vim than he meant for, and the tightening at the corners of Remus’ eyes augments the leap of hesitation in Sirius’ guts. “...Isn’t it?”

“I don’t really want to talk about it right now,” Remus says lightly, gesturing for Sirius to come fill the space in his tired, open arms. As the record passes into a sweetly-twisting declamation on the violin, Sirius nestles into the warm of Remus to close his eyes briefly and internalize the feeling of peace.

“D’you want your presents now or tomorrow?” Sirius asks. His voice is soft against the collar of Remus’ jumper, and he watches with muted but greedy eagerness to see a half-smile twitch onto Remus’ lips. 

“Tomorrow will be fine, I—really, honestly don’t want to do anything besides this right now,” he replies. Sirius settles back down against the plane of Remus’ chest then, tracking his heartbeat like a scent and wondering wildly over the ubiquity of “This”-es between the two of them. This Flat; This Room; This Time; Whatever This Is. Sirius supposes he should be grateful to even have the privilege of sharing space with Remus, but Sirius has never been a terribly patient man and would appreciate it if the stars would figure their shit out soon and help him define what _This_ will inevitably decide to be. 

They lay silent in their separate contemplation with the contrast of the record spiraling through its song of sea and Sinbad, the type of bravado Sirius always tried to ply as a boy but never quite figured out for his predisposition to Care Too Much. When the third movement wends into the air with a smoky melody of distant attraction, Remus sighs lightly.

“I like this part best,” he murmurs, eyes still shut but looking far more relaxed than he had on arrival.

“It’s the Prince meeting the Princess,” Sirius replies, turning over to his back so he can stare up at the ceiling and imagine the aimless shapes of the plaster matching the flow if the music as he always likes to do. Remus is still warm and calm beside him, and when he shifts Sirius looks over to see him propped on one elbow up on his side to look at Sirius in repose. 

“Are you the Princess?” Remus teases gently, grinning with pleased triumph at his own wit as Sirius can’t stop the chuckle on his tongue. He adores Remus. He absolutely fucking adores him. 

“For Christmas for you? I’ll be the bloody _queen,”_ Sirius says through a stretch, moving to drape his arm across Remus’ shoulder and pull him into a muzzy, languid kiss. 

Sirius is drunk and Sirius is happy, and Sirius is confused as well as terribly frustrated with his own tongue-tied rakishness regarding the whole Definitely-In-Love-With-One’s-Best-Mate-and-Flatmate situation, but at least he has the constant of kissing Remus Lupin until he forgets how to be anxious. 

_Happy Christmas indeed._

—

_25 December, 1979_

“Morning!”

Sirius looks up from the tray of pastries and tea he’s been charming warmer and plumper than he bought them, grinning automatically at the cadence of Lyall’s voice as he comes over their hearth with a tired smile. Sirius had jumped at the chance to have him over this year, wanting to do something within his extremely limited power of the outsider to the tragedy of loss to make the holiday feel less-awful. With Hope’s funeral only just over a week past, Sirius knew they couldn’t leave Remus’ father in the countryside to contemplate his new loneliness no matter how vehemently he would insist he was just fine. 

“Happy Christmas!” Sirius exclaims, glad he’s had the foresight to move the armchair out of the spare room and next to the sofa for another place to sit when he sees the set of undeniable weariness on Lyall’s shoulders. He rests the breakfast offering on he coffee table and gratefully takes the warm embrace Lyall extends to him. 

“Morning, da,” Remus behind them to emerge from the bedroom with as sunny a smile he can muster as, Sirius catalogues with an ardent tug in his guts, one who has just hastily cleared a recent and inconvenient burst of tears from his eyes. Lyall politely says nothing of the mourning sadness, intent instead to embrace Remus as well with a more clinging sort of paternal refuge. Sirius bites his lip to stay a wave of tossing feeling when he notices Remus clenching his jaw to hold back what looks like another round of emotion.

“Did you both have a fine Eve?” Lyall asks with the brisk frame of Moving Past It, draping his overcoat and scarf over the back of the armchair before settling himself on its plush expanse. 

“James and Lily had us over,” Remus says as he pours three tall cups of tea, talking to clear the clouds behind his eyes as he always tends to do. “James’ father got his hands on a massive roast he said he couldn’t dare finish on his own, so Lily and I had to figure out how to cook it all in one go. Incendio has many uses.”

“They sent us home with leftovers for weeks, so if you want any...” Sirius suggested with a warning tone, raising an eyebrow to Lyall to make the man chuckle as he accepts the tea from Remus. 

“I got plenty from my own neighbors, we were all over at one house down the lane last night for dinner. It was lovely.”

Remus’ face lights up marginally to hear the lack of reclusiveness from his father. Sirius’ heart soars at its beauty. 

It had enchanted Sirius to see the way Remus and Lyall share similarities and differences back at the house after the funeral earlier in the month, and it still makes his core hum with contentment to be witness to the chug of conversation in the present. Sirius is more than happy to just be a bystander to this steady readjustment of father and son after losing their wife and mother, but he’s clearly a bit more integral to the moment than he initially assumed as Remus turns to him after almost an hour of normal conversation with a unique set to his eyes. 

“Well, da, we—“ Remus pauses for a moment before he sighs lightly and pours another shallow measure of tea for himself. “Sirius and I have been doing a lot of...talking lately.”

Sirius’ throat nearly seizes around the muffin he’s swallowing as he realizes that Remus is opening the gambit of revealing how they’ve been carrying on for the past several days since breaching the hallowed ground of “I love you;” the levees of years of guarded sidestepping shattered in the gorgeous, arcing admission of wondrous truths between them and shagging until neither of them could stand properly. _Ta, Rem—‘talking,’ sure._

“And what’s been the topic? Anything wrong with the flat?” Lyall asks. He’s the picture of calm, and Sirius’ inner voice mutters with the hope he remains such if Remus is taking this down the path he most definitely sounds like he is. 

“No, the—no Boggarts, no pixies,” Remus jokes with a halfhearted cough of laughter. He takes another short pause before his bites his lips together, looks up at Sirius with an expression that could only be called Flummoxed, and turns to face Lyall with a steeled set to his brow. Sirius almost lets fly his own jumpy laugh at its boyish obstinance. “Sirius and I are together.”

The words hanging in the open air like that feel strange in a way that isn’t uncomfortable at all but still foreign to Sirius’ eardrums. There it is then: the first admission of the truth that’s been making waking up lately the most wondrous gift he’s ever chanced at having.

To Lyall’s credit, he doesn’t look shocked at all. He hums genially around the rim of his teacup and sets it down before he smiles kindly. Sirius’ brain skips a synapse for the exact opposite of this reaction to what he had faced from his own family hearing of his proclivities. 

“Congratulations,” Lyall says, true warmth eddying behind his eyes as he looks at Sirius. “Years of post-lunar care have a way of making him bearable, don’t they?”

Remus rolls his eyes despite the blush suffusing his face. “Da—”

“But if you break my son’s heart I’ll jinx you until you can’t see straight.”

_“Da!”_ Remus’ repeated admonishment a slightly-breathless laugh now, the threat clearly lighthearted but still landing heavy as lead at the very bottom of Sirius’ guts. _Warning received._

“If I break your son’s heart I think he’ll take care of most of the ruining for you,” Sirius replies, adding to the giddy rhythm of relief in his system when Lyall laughs at that with a knowing nod. 

“This isn’t a terribly new development, I’m sure. Oh stop, I’m not blind,” the older man says, a flash of Remus-like youth passing through him as he grins sideways at his son when Remus balks around a gulp of tea to defend himself. 

“What makes you so sure?” Remus sputters. 

“Remus,” Lyall says with professorial slant, “I like to think I’m at least a passable father and noticed that my own child was half-mad for his schoolmate. You’re only lucky the road ended up going both ways, eh?” He winks conspiratorially at Sirius over a fresh scone while Sirius feels his heart swell flush with victory behind his ribs.

When, later that afternoon—after the tea and pastries are all but crumbs and Lyall has Flooed back to a very quiet house, after Remus clears the dishes with the sort of silence that betrays him being very much in his own head, after Sirius pulls him into the wordless embrace that so clearly says _You Are Everything_ and kisses him until those lips smile a little bit more easily—Sirius finds a very small gift beneath the tree addressed to him, he has little idea who it might be from. Remus is out to pick up more flour and a now-discounted carton of eggnog to go with their new bottle of rum from Pete, so Sirius opens it on his own right there on the floor—impeccable paper torn gingerly to reveal a postcard-sized framed photo. It’s only then that Sirius puts the two-and-two if the handwriting on the gift tag and the subject of the present together. 

Smiling up at him in sepia are two young men who hardly knew what to do with themselves, laughing easily at something the one behind the camera had just said. Their arms are looped around one another’s waists in mock sweetness that looks too comfortable to be wholly joking, and the way Remus looks sideway at Sirius just tenderly enough to matter reveals a mountain of truth beneath the heart of the plain “Welcome to _la maison!”_ that he sees the younger Sirius mouthing in the silence of the moving picture. 

Gripped with a gale of fantastic feelings, Sirius’ fingers rasp across a scrap of paper fixed to the back of the frame. He turns it over quickly to see the same efficient script in blue ink that had proclaimed his name on the wrapping paper:

_Sirius,  
_ _Happy Christmas—  
_ _Remus has lived a fuller life than I ever dared to want for him with you in it.  
_ _Hope would be so proud!_

_—L_

_P.S. I’ve been wanting to frame this for both of you for almost 3 years now but things kept getting in the way. The photo is 6 June, 1977, moving in at Basingstoke._

—

_24 December, 1980_

In three years, Sirius has never lit more than one candle in the flat beyond a weak attempt at romanticism. Tonight, in the forced dark of a blackout curfew for all wizarding households, scads of enchanted candles illuminate sparse edges of the flat in orange realms of glowing flame. New heavy curtains are drawn tight against each window but Sirius has still insisted on at least charming the standing mirror beside the record player to reflect a northerly view of the night sky. 

War might very well be afoot, but they should still be able to look at the fucking stars on Christmas Eve. 

“The cider is perfect, Lily,” Remus says gently as he sips deep from the heavy mug wrapped in his hands. They’ve closed off the Floo with a crackling fire to keep them as warm as possible in the dark of uneasiness, two couples huddling on the rug and trying not to be angry at the world at large on this supposed night of brotherhood and peace. 

“James was the one who spiked it,” Lily says with a smile like diamonds in the dark of a mine shaft, “I only juiced the apples.”

“Can’t have cider without apples,” James teases back, nudging her knee beneath the thick woolen blanket they’re sharing. 

Dinner had been curry from the corner, picked up by Sirius at his most Muggle-passing on the motorbike, and after finishing and drinking deeply the whole time they had tried for at least a few hours of playing records. But the Ministry wire charm had kicked in earlier than expected to cut the electricity in the flat; Sirius only _just_ held back from kicking the radio to shit when the infuriatingly familiar and chipper voice came through the speaker cone with its nightly instructions to _Please shut all curtains and entry portals until the hour past sunrise and cease as much magic as possible—the blackout is now in effect. Remember: if one remains well out of sight, there shan’t be need for flight or fight._

So here they sit, surrounded with ranks of candles and a falsified view of the sky beyond the clouds to begin the farewell march to another shit-tier year. 

“Wish we could at least play a fucking record,” Sirius mutters, swilling deeply from the flask of savage Dragon Barrel he much prefers to cider. 

“Cheer up, mutt,” Lily says brightly, a sisterly tone of voice that isn’t naïve but knowing for the way she can always cheer his dour moods. “We could still sing.”

_“You_ could still sing,” James snorts. “I don’t think you want the rusty cutlery of me and Sirius trying to hold a tune.”

“Oi, it’s not that bad!” Sirius barks. He looks at Remus for confirmation and sees only hesitance.

“...It’s pretty bad _AH,_ alright! Alright! _Passable!”_ Remus sputters when Sirius buries his face into Remus’ neck to plant a barrage of quick and vengeful kisses there. A bolt of laughter chains between the four of them before dying back down to silence—errant breeze over the embers to bring only the briefest fizzling of vigor in this unknowing darkness. 

_“God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay,”_ Lily begins to sing softly. 

_“For Jesus Christ our savior was born upon this day,”_ Remus responds, gentle tenor thrumming sweetly in his lungs, transferring the hum of air through his back against Sirius’ chest where he leans close. 

_“To save poor souls from Satan’s pow’r which long had gone astray, which brings tidings of comfort and joy; comfort and joy, which brings tidings of comfort and joy.”_ The duet of their ether-soft voices curls together in the quiet of the flat, sparking the dark with a tune Sirius likes the sound of despite his lack of connection to the old lyrics. 

“Did the church-marms ever make you learn the lyrics past the first verse?” Lily asks Remus after the sound settles around them as she shares from James’ bottle of cider. 

“I could sing it _all_ when I was 5,” Remus says with mock pride, “might well have become a priest someday if I hadn’t been cursed to shit.”

“Moony the magical monsignor,” Lily hums, pleased with herself as James rolls his eyes and presses a kiss to the crown of her head. 

Sirius pulls Remus closer to hold him tightly about the waist, warm and layered with jumpers and socks abound beneath their own blanket. Remus sighs a brief and toneless breath of contentment, always more apt between the two of them to find tenuous peace amidst bullshit and strife, and nestles himself nearer in the whisper of wool. Sirius huddles around him, stares into the guttering glow of the embers on the hearth, and tries to believe in something besides ashes. 

—

_23 December, 1981_

Sirius closes his eyes as the green flames of travel engulf him, the brimstone-y smell of it tickling at his nostrils as air whips past him noisily. Deposited soon on the hearth at home, the silence smacks like iron.

Opening his eyes and shaking white soot from his shoulders _—have to sweep the bloody thing soon, fuck—_ Sirius notices with a pang in his gut that Remus isn’t in the sitting room or the kitchen lying empty and post-festive. 

“Rem?” Sirius calls tentatively as he pulls off his coat and fingers at the twine wrapped gaily around the gift in his hands. He and Remus had promised no gifts this year, but the scarf in the window at the heart of town on his way back from meeting James for breakfast was too perfect to pass up. Remus needed a new one anyways. As well as any reason to smile. 

Remus is wrapped in the bedclothes when Sirius pushes open the door, a shroud of sheets and blankets that drapes heavily over his body currently hunched over a thick volume of rhetoric. Sirius can tell Remus isn’t absorbing a word for the bruises of exhaustion smudged beneath the dulled green of his eyes; the action is nothing but the solace of distraction from himself. 

“Happy Christmas,” Sirius murmurs, extending the scarf like a peace offering to a frightened and wounded creature. Remus looks up at him after a moment’s pause, eyes inquisitive with a muted sort of light instead of the bright and honed curiosity that Sirius misses so terribly lately. 

“We agreed no gifts,” Remus says. His voice is hoarse with disuse. Sirius swallows around his dry throat to stay the rash of emotion that wants to scream _But I still adore you even if the world is falling apart out there, don’t you understand?!_

“It—was too perfect to pass up,” Sirius settles on saying lamely. Remus looks at him for a moment longer before he gently shuts the book and shuffles off the coil of sheets. He stands gingerly as if the floorboards might crack beneath his feet, and he steps over to Sirius with the weight of a universe in his stride. 

Remus takes the scarf in careful fingers and feels at the cashmere with a few slow sweeps of his thumb. “Thank you,” he murmurs. Sirius smiles and almost misses the silvery flash of something complex that feathers through Remus’ irises. 

“I’m glad you like it,” Sirius assures him. 

Remus’ eyes tighten at their corners as they tend to do when emotion grips him unexpectedly. “I don’t have anything for you.”

“No worries, you—”

“I should have gotten something for you, _shit—”_

“Remus, it’s fine—”

_“It’s not fine!”_

Remus’ shout takes them both off-guard, Sirius shocked and Remus stricken with disappointment—in himself, the situation, or the world at large is anyone’s guess. It’s almost impossible to tell these days. 

“Remus,” Sirius says softly after several seconds of collecting stillness. Remus remains standing a single step away from him with the scarf held tight in his fists, staring at the floor with an expression painfully similar to the feeling of trying to dispel the pitch of nausea. “Talk to me.” Nothing; Sirius’ heart grips and he bristles in a buckling of his own resolve. “Hell and ashes, Remus, please, it’s _Christmas—”_

“What do we do if it all comes back?” Remus interrupts him, voice low and fevered. It’s so unlike Remus to be abjectly afraid of anything that it takes an extra moment of processing for Sirius to understand the gravity of the question.

“They can’t come back, their—He’s been defeated,” Sirius replies in a stammer. 

“And our friends have been murdered. Do you honestly believe they’ll all stop here?” Remus is present with sudden acuity, and at the deepest pit of his gut Sirius wishes fiercely that talk of things besides the war could drag him out of the strange malaise of mourning that has plagued him since November. 

“I can _hope_ they’ll stop here, what else is there besides?” Sirius’ tongue tastes bitter with the strain of truth.

Remus feels at the material of scarf again as he stares down at it and shakes his head slowly. “I don’t know, Sirius.” Sirius sees his broad, drooping shoulders flex with the grip of compressing emotion before he hears it in Remus’ voice, and it guts him viciously. “I don’t know what we _do.”_

Sirius embraces Remus as if keeping him from sliding to pieces, a motion he’s practiced more in the past month then the last ten years of their togetherness combined. He feels Remus swallow thickly against the length of his own throat, pressed near and sacred as the very blood in his veins. The scarf is a warm mass of cushioning between their hearts still held in Remus’ hands like a belated impact guard against the trauma of October.

“We keep existing,” Sirius whispers fervently. He feels his fingers flex unconsciously against the fabric of Remus’ jumper, pushing closer to the warmth of the skin and spine beneath it, rare and hallowed ground for a broken age. “We live, and breathe, and love, and fuck, and defy every bloody end that any of those bastards might have intended for us.”

Remus is silent for another long moment, his body shuddering slightly with the effort of resisting more tears. “You’ve always been better at defiance,” he says gently. Sirius’ heart contracts with adoration as he looses a breathless, humorless laugh—consistently surprised by the vigor that lives in Remus even when he looks like pain incarnate and barely looks up from whatever he does to distract himself from the present.

“I’ve never been good at breaking habits,” Sirius murmurs, holding Remus tighter and cherishing his warmth—a fire in the frigid tundra of the unknown, blazing onward and upward, stoked by love.

—

_24 December, 1982_

Sirius is hardly over the threshold of the hearth before Remus meets him there. He balks, riled like a bird ruffling its feathers when something flashes across its vision, as Remus swiftly takes the consistently-last-minute Christmas boxes in Sirius’ arms and all but tosses them to rest on the drafting desk.

“Hallo,” Remus growls, and Sirius nearly loses his balance when Remus pulls him into the crush of a fervent, starved kiss. Sirius’ eyes flutter shut as he flails for purchase on Remus’ waist, the wall behind him, the nape of Remus’ neck—he responds with the instinctual thirst of his bleeding heart and opens to the smoky tinge of Remus’ mouth like a recurring dream.

The moon is tomorrow, and Sirius has been helping for the past three days to stave off the tension in all the ways he likes best.

They hardly separate as Remus wrests off Sirius’ coat and tosses it haphazardly across the desk chair, not caring to notice when it tips off balance and topples to the floor. Sirius buries his fingers in Remus’ hair to tug as he always does when the lunar frequency keens high and invisible and deafeningly loud in Remus’ ears—Remus breaks the press of their searching, fervent lips to rasp a blissful cry of encouragement.

“Where,” Sirius breathes, holding fast at the base of Remus’ skull like fetters on a feral catch, not letting him lean in to sate himself on the drug of Sirius’ kiss. Remus’ top lip curls up against his teeth in heated truculence, his pupils wide and irises striated with the icepick points of restlessness. His own hands on Sirius’ shirt collar are white-knuckled with quiet ferocity.

“Here,” he snarls, “on the floor, on my fucking knees and begging for you _.”_

The demand goes straight to Sirius’ cock and heats his blood like a hex. He still doesn’t let Remus nearer than the breath of space between them; he feels the frustrated groan from Remus’ throat just as well as he hears it.

“Start begging,” Sirius murmurs.

The skin of Remus’ neck tastes of sweat and musk and the constant hint of sex that Sirius always smells on him, and Sirius kisses it as if worshipping the marble of some dead saint’s effigy. Remus clings like he might transform right then and there without the purchase on Sirius’ body—he presses himself close, rutting faintly against Sirius’ thigh with impatient insistence. Sirius does his best to ignore the chanting impulse in his own medulla that tells him to snap this tension immediately and respond to the press of Remus’ pelvis, probably teased to the heat of its current urgency while he waited for Sirius to get home, languid across the sofa, reaching to run searching fingers along his stiffening length—

“Sirius, please,” Remus groans. Sirius shakes himself out of his own half-present imaginings, ignores the plea and only lowers Remus to the floor without ceasing the path of lips against skin. He positions himself between Remus’ knees and moves down the woolen plane of the maroon-colored jumper until he reaches the hem to ease his hands beneath and press his hands to the bare plane of Remus’ stomach. Remus hisses in a breath and curses faintly, his cheeks blotted red with arousal as he arches into the touch.

“Patience,” Sirius hums. His own voice quavers ever so slightly already. He leans down to replace the tracing of his grazing fingers with his mouth, pushing the hem up, up, up, kissing across the scars and dips of musculature. He moves his thumbs up to rest in subtle, maddening circles on Remus’ nipples and relishes the unraveling sigh of ecstasy that shudders from those ragged, blessed lungs.

Sirius always saves the best of his tricks for when he needs alacrity paired with this delicious danger of untamed desire, all the bullshit he has too much self-respect for when they’re carrying on as normal to make love instead of fuck, adore one another instead of use each body as a glorious means to an end—but now it’s flesh instead of feelings, blood and sweat in lieu of slow loveliness, so he undoes Remus’ button fly with his teeth and charms the fingers on his right hand slick with a wordless incantation that buzzes faintly in his wrist as the magic rises up through his skin. It had taken him more than several tries to get this to work properly when he was seventeen.

When Sirius eases his hand down between Remus’ thighs, he stills himself for a moment not to be completely undone before he even gets to the core of his intention. The tremor of need that wracks his own body as Remus gasps to press himself nearer to the smoothed touch flares through the lower reaches of Sirius’ back and pelvis. He feels an unintentional growl rip its way out of his vocal cords as he watches Remus throw his head back in the rapture of anticipation. Patently avoiding Remus’ own eager cock in order to spin this tension out as far as possible, Sirius slides two fingers in slowly, one at a time, and vents the compression of distilled craving by watching Remus from just beneath his navel, still teasing steadily at his skin there with an insistent mouth.

“Sirius, _please,”_ Remus finally gasps, the words forming fractured out of the mounting sounds of impatient heat spinning from his voice like gold. Sirius looks up at him to lock their gazes, electric both and pinning each other like lances hitting home on their shields of resolve, and withdraws his fingers with the slow deliberation of knowing Exactly What Needs Doing. Remus shudders and flexes around him, which derails Sirius’ brain six times over for the knowledge of what that will feel like around the part of him currently stiff for it.

“On your knees,” Sirius says. His voice is rough and primed, beading with the beginnings of their climb towards climax just like his cock, and he hastily undoes his own trousers as Remus shifts up from his sprawl. Before he turns over to let Sirius grip his hips and deliver them into the Eden of coupled give-and-take, he pulls Sirius into a haphazard kiss through both of their stumbling kneels. Sirius’ heart flexes with the immediacy of the moment, and so “I’m going to fuck you until you’re shouting my name,” he breathes against Remus’ lips when they pull apart.

“Make it so good I _forget_ your name,” Remus challenges— _Ah,_ there’s the beast, showing its teeth in the cut of the light in Remus’ eyes and the way he grips hard onto Sirius’ shoulders. But Sirius is faster and, for the moment, stronger, so he pulls Remus’ hair again as a fulcrum and maneuvers him around to press backward against Sirius’ length with the tease of pressure. The feeling is one that never ceases to make Sirius run an appreciative and worshipful stroke down the long path of Remus’ back stretched before him.

“Beg,” he bids simply.

Remus is only warmth and sound as Sirius cups the arch of his left hip and pulls steadily backwards, kisses a long path down the column of his back, pauses in response to the broken cry of _There,_ just between the dimples of his lower back, pale tear of repaired skin like a tattoo that Sirius kisses open-mouthed as if slowly lapping up wine. Remus twists beneath him to press nearer, arching, searching—

“Fucking please, Sirius, I can’t—I need it,” Remus pants. His voice wear desperation well.

“You need what?” Sirius asks pointedly. He reaches around to touch with the hand that isn’t clutching Remus’ hip, a redolent whisper of his fingertips to the flushed skin of his shaft, and has to bow his forehead down to Remus’ back with a grounding shudder when Remus cries out with encouragement.

“I need you to pull my hair and fuck me,” He cries. Sirius bites his lip in the suspense of preparation as he slides his hand through the return journey up Remus’ back, knitting his fingers into the soft waves at the atlas of Remus’ skull to wrap and tug and crane his head back gently, watch the curve of his neck with the cool appreciation of watching art unfold before him.

“By your leave,” Sirius hisses. He’s leaned in close to breathe the words at the hollow of Remus’ jaw, just below his ear, catching the lobe between his teeth with the ghost of just enough pressure to tear another ragged breath from Remus. Sirius has himself whetted and rigid, drawn thick to wait with barely-reigned stillness between Remus’ legs, and he can feel the molten ore of passion rising like a swelling riverbed behind his heart.

“Deliver me,” Remus whispers. At the sound of his voice trembling with its attenuated need, Sirius lets himself free of his own suspended desire and presses inward, enveloped, warm and surrounded finally in a rush so steady and necessary that he can’t keep from summoning Remus’ name on a feathered gasp, hallowed and whole.

They move as one with the stuttered rhythm of starting out, gaining grace and fluidity soon enough as they surrender to the persistent cant of their bodies. Sirius keeps a firm hold on Remus’ hair to steady the lithe body beneath him, pleasing himself with the sight of it as much as the feeling of fucking him, loving him, adoring every inch of his existence. After several minutes of moving together, Remus has his cheek pressed to the floorboards with his hips held up for glorious grip.

“Touch me, Sirius,” he pleads. The sweat springing up on his skin to make him shine like some sort of deity has plastered a lock of hair to his temple, tripping over his eye to obfuscate his gaze and haze the sight of him with fiery eroticism. Sirius feels the twinge of approaching finality in the base of his pelvis, the heat of it pooling like errant magic to sing through the roots of his nerves there.

“Touch yourself,” Sirius replies, rough without quite meaning to, caught in the swirling sensation of knowing he won’t last much longer, needing to see Remus through to his own ends to give him the fodder for perfect release. Remus meets his eyes then, his teeth gritted with the combined plush of pleasure with the bright sting of slight pain from the strain of Sirius’ hold on his hair. Sirius can see forever into the depths of those eyes.

Sirius wishes with the last scrap of his mind not swallowed by sex that his eyes could be everywhere at once, flickering to every point of the blessed image of Remus bent before him as Remus wraps a shaking hand around his cock. He begins stroking with a pace that tries desperately to match Sirius’ lead, and Sirius has to slow himself to avoid finishing then and there. The distilled beauty of it lasts for an unknowable length of time before Sirius can’t bear it any longer.

“You’re gorgeous,” he rasps as he pulls ever so slightly harder on Remus’ hair. Remus’ body shudders and he squeezes his eyes shut, something close to a sob of euphoria escaping him.

“I’m coming,” Remus chokes out, the sudden truth of it igniting Sirius’ core to wildfire, “I’m—fuck, I— _Sirius, I’m—”_ A ripping cry of pleasure overrides the words as Remus lets himself be taken by the wave of climax. He pushes back against Sirius, taking him to the hilt, and Sirius clenches his jaw to hold on for just long enough to witness this untiring perfection through to its end. Remus spills in several rich pulses, roping to the floor beneath him, while his muscles tense and relax with the haywire short-circuitry of rapture.

Sirius feels and sees and smells and hears it all around him, eddying through his senses as he continues to delve against Remus with sacred insistence. He has never been a religious man, never understood why one would need to seek intercession from some unseen director, but over the years he has come to see Remus as the omniscient divine so many have chased—Remus’ mind, his body, his voice, his spirit. He would follow Remus to the ends of the earth, pave his pathways with gold and incense, kiss his feet and perfume his hands and dress him in silks to—

_“Oh,”_ the feeble cry of arrival tripping out of Sirius’ throat takes him by surprise so he clutches at Remus’ shoulders for purchase. _“Remus,”_ he prays wildly, the name like holy fire, cleansing the sweat-slick skin beneath his mouth with it as he bites down benignly on Remus shoulder to loose his orgasm deep and hard. Remus cries out along with him in the throes of refraction, and for a suspended moment they both are the only living creatures who exist in the universe.

A handful of minutes later, cleaned up and bundled in a clutter of satiated limbs before the roaring fireplace, Sirius smiles with pride to watch Remus twist a fall of long, black hair around his finger. His blood beats rich and slow with the relief of completion, humming faintly to know that there will probably be at least two more rounds of that insistence before the moon comes. There are worse things in the world.

“I adore you,” Remus murmurs. The vicious thrum of the moon has dissipated for the moment, and the clarity in his eyes is staggering. Tomorrow will be hectic, but this hour can be sweet. Sirius leans down to kiss him softly, hold those lips to his own with the wordless oath of forever.

“You are everything,” Sirius whispers. The truth has never felt smoother on his tongue. “Happy Christmas.”

—

_25 December, 1983_

“Siri!”

The Floo roars to bring in the Potters, Harry surging toward Sirius despite Lily’s grip on his little hand.

“Darling, hold on—” Not even halfway off the hearth, Lily has to lean down to jimmy the wriggling little boy out of his jacket in just enough time before he beelines for his godfather like a bludger.

“It’s Harry!” Sirius cries, abandoning the tea he’s pouring with his exaggerated excitement only half-feigned, scooping up the little ball of energy in a swoop that makes the boy shriek with laughter. “Happy Christmas!”

Remus greets James and Lilly to take their coats as Sirius flips Harry upside-down to hang by his ankles, his tiny pair of new spectacles hanging askew on his face.

“My goodness, you can see now! You look like a little messenger owl,” Sirius exclaims.

“I have glasses!” Harry announces, still upside down and smiling so wide his little cheeks tinge pink.

“Why don't you come sit and we can show Uncle Remus your glasses too?” Lily suggests loudly, patting a seat on the sofa beside her back the sitting room. Sirius tosses Harry upright again with another squeal of giggles from the little boy, and the moment his feet touch the floor again he charges out of the kitchen to be with the others while Sirius finishes preparing the tea tray.

“Remus I have glasses!” The high little voice peals like excitable bells to twin with Remus’ laughter, both sounds warming Sirius’ insides with the pleasant strength of tenderness. 

“That you do,” Remus says, matter-of-fact as he lifts Harry onto his lap. “A 3-year-old with glasses is a very important thing.”

“He runs around a hell of a lot more now that he can actually see where he’s going,” James says with the slightest air of exasperation as Sirius brings in the tea and breakfast with his wand out to float in a couple wrapped boxes of gifts as well. Lily groans when she sees the largest one addressed to Harry.

“Sirius, we told you nothing big—”

“I seem to forget that entirely, hm, what a shame,” Sirius replies immediately. He takes his place beside Remus and gives Lily his most triumphant smile as she rolls her eyes, not without good humor.

“Harry, it looks like you’ve got one more present to open,” James says with weighty emphasis to bring Harry squirming off of Remus’ knee to patter over to the box lying beside James’ chair.

“Daddy what is it?”

“Ask Uncle Siri,” James prompts with a gesture to Sirius. Harry whirls to face him, bright green eyes alight with conviction.

“You have to open it,” Sirius insists with a nod to the box in its gold-and-silver wrapping paper. Harry slaps his hands onto the top of the box and scrubs uselessly at the paper with flexes of his little fingers. He bounces up and down where he stands with excitement that just can’t be contained.

“Daddy help me open!”

“Alright, we have to tear here…” James kneels beside his son to help him start folding away the wrapping, and Sirius holds in a chuckle at the spitting image similarity of the two; nut-brown skin, flyaway hair like kohled flax, glasses shimmering faintly in the daylight coming through the windows.

“Sirius, I swear, if this is something exorbitant,” Lily warns open-ended as she pours a cup of tea for herself. Sirius snorts.

“Don’t look at me, this was Remus’ idea,” he says in his defense. Lily’s eyebrows shoot up, and Remus tries to cover his smile with the edge of his teacup.

“I suggested it, Sirius picked it,” he says quickly before drowning any further explanation with a wide gulp of tea.

“You two are a bloody disaster,” Lily mutters just before a wide rip of paper sounds and James cries out with awe mirrored by Harry, not quite understanding why but copying his father’s excitement just because.

“A Nimbus Prime?!” James opens the child-size case with reverence as Harry stares, clearly taken by the shine of freshly-polished wood and brass handling gear on the new broomstick. “Not even all the _professionals_ have these yet, Sirius, he’s _3.”_

“And the broom I gave him two years ago was cheap and not worth riding anymore, my godson deserves to learn on the best,” Sirius says airily.

“Sirius, honestly,” Lily protests with weak insistence, but her eyes are sparked with motherly adoration.

“Well how else is going to become a Quidditch star and fund your pension?” Remus hums, bringing James’ laugh as he continues admiring the broom.

“Wow, Sirius, this is—thank you, say ‘thank you,’ Harry!”

“Thank you!” Harry cries, jumping once with aimless, boyish excitement. Sirius bundles him up and plants a loud kiss to his forehead.

“You’re very welcome, Harry James!” He lowers his voice to a dramatic aside, conspiratorial to meet Harry’s eyes. “You can ride that _fast_ when you get home, give your daddy a run for his money, eh?”

“Mummy was always the faster flyer and you know that,” Lily insists as Remus laughs with hearty force.

The excitement of the gift settles soon, with several promises to let Harry race James, and then Lily, and then Sirius, and _then_ Remus—with a bit of prodding for the last one. Sirius brushes a fall of crumbs from a scone off of his knee as he draws breath to change the subject to the new Geordie album that had just released, intent on sparking up his favorite debate of music taste between Lily and James that he’s loved to cause since he was a boy, but a strangled sound from Lily stops him cold.

“Are you alright?” Remus asks immediately, his posture sharp and ready to get up and perform the Heimlich or cast a counterjinx. Lily says nothing but points violently at Sirius’ left hand as she frantically finishes chewing a piece of an orange with her free hand covering her mouth in instinctive politesse.

“When the bloody hell did that happen!” She demands after a labored swallow of the fruit. Sirius looks down, half expecting the alarm to be for a pockmark in the floorboards or an accidentally singed patch on the sofa itself, and he furrows his eyebrows as he twists to examine his trousers for a stain or a patched hole.

“What? Is there something—”

“Rings, you berk, you’re wearing rings! Engaged? Married?!”

Sirius stops and extends his left hand as if seeing the ring for the first time in a while, and rightfully so—it’s become a part of him lately just like the stud of his earring, or the weight of his tool belt when he’s in the garage. “Ah. Yes.”

“Well what is it then, engaged or married?” James presses, just as intent now as Lily. Harry looks on from his lap in the plain, blank interest of any child still learning how to follow a conversation, and Sirius feels himself blush involuntarily.

“Well, neither. Ish. I—” He looks sideways at Remus and asks for help with his eyes. “We were in Skegness a little more than two months ago…”

“…and Sirius is a bleeding heart who wanted to make sure I didn’t forget how dramatic he is when he waxes affectionate,” Remus finishes. The cool evenness in his voice is ruined by the ardor swimming around behind his eyes when Sirius pins him with a good-natured glower. “We can’t actually get married, you know that, but—yeah. They’re nice to wear.”

“They’re more than ‘nice,’ they’re bloody wonderful,” Sirius mutters, nudging Remus’ knee obstinately.

Lily lances James with an exacting cut of her eyes. “You’ve been getting a weekly pint with them since before Harry was born and have _completely missed this?”_ She hisses.

James shrinks back into his chair slightly, unconsciously holding Harry like a sort of shield against Lily’s harmless-but-barreling wrath. “They’ve been as good as married for years, Lily—”

“But rings, they’re wearing _rings,_ how did this go unnoticed? You could have told me, we could have celebrated! If Harry suddenly sprouted wings, would you fail to notice that as well?” Lily pours herself another cup of tea, huffing like a ruffled badger.

“If Harry suddenly sprouted wings we would need to have a longer conversation about paternity,” James says in his defense.

“I’m married to a todger,” Lily sighs. “Harry, Daddy is a todger.”

“Daddy is a todder!” Harry cries with victory, his arms up as if he’d just scored points in the grand game of humor. It fuels the boy’s nascent sense of pride when Remus laughs at the butchered insult.

“Well, belated idiocy aside, we should celebrate sometime soon,” James offers. Sirius glances over at Remus to see him beaming with accidental contentment, which causes his own guts to twist pleasantly.

The little family of these five survivors, defiant to forge onward amidst the ever-present press of time and strife, makes Sirius’ soul echo deeply with the warbling tones of peace. As Christmases go, it’s one of the far better ones.

—

_24 December, 1984_

Sirius hears the fire flare green in the sitting room as he finishes readjusting the position of the drafting desk for the third time. Remus has been out all morning finishing up some shopping and posting last-minute gifts—Sirius feels boyishly proud that his influence of tardiness has rubbed off over time.

“Love?” Remus calls, “I’ve got more wine.”

“Grand, bring it in here!” Sirius pushes the half-open door to the spare room fully wide to lean against the jamb, grinning as Remus turns to see him. “Happy Christmas, I’ve got your office set up.”

“You didn’t,” Remus says, his eyes widening slightly, crossing immediately to make for the newly tidied space. He pauses in the threshold to kiss Sirius stolidly before moving into the room and turning slowly to take it all in.

“Did you rearrange any of the papers in my—”

“I didn’t actually touch anything, I enchanted it all in. My arms are shot for lifting anyways, been working on engines for a week straight,” Sirius assures him. He watches from his place in the doorway, adoring the way Remus rakes his eyes through the space with contented assurance. He lets out a sunny spat of laughter when he sees the ficus tree in the corner by the window.

“You got me another plant!”

“And I didn’t kill it on the way over, aren’t you proud of me?”

“Immensely. And you remembered the bookcase.”

“How could I forget? You love those books more than me.”

“Only halfway true. How long did this take?” Remus is still holding the bottle of wine unconsciously like a security blanket, and he meets Sirius’ look as he finishes cataloguing the new room.

“Only about an hour. Small sacrifice. I got you a real gift too,” Sirius says, nodding his chin to the top drawer of the desk. Remus follows the gesture and sets the bottle down before pulling open the drawer to grin with a revival of school-age excitement in his eyes.

“I was going to buy this for myself! How did you—”

“When Remus Lupin circles an advert for a new set of quills in the paper and leaves it on the kitchen table,” Sirius sighs as he saunters over to drape an arm around Remus’ waist, “One knows what must be done.”

“You fucking nancy,” Remus snorts before he pulls Sirius into a gentle thank-you kiss. Sirius smiles into it and responds, putting both hands to Remus’ jaw and pouring love through his lips.

Sirius hums a surprised interjection when Remus suddenly shifts with graceful subtlety to pin Sirius against the desk and nip playfully at his bottom lip. “Who’s the ‘fucking nancy’ now,” Sirius teases before Remus coaxes him quiet with a well-placed press of his thigh.

“This is an extremely kind gesture you’ve shown me,” Remus murmurs, “and so I would like very much to reciprocate.”

“Do I get to chose the brand of reciprocation?” Sirius sallies, feathered breath leaving him deliciously when Remus takes his time pressing a series of indolent kisses to Sirius’ neck.

“No,” Remus says eventually, simple and clear, before returning to Sirius’ mouth. They kiss until Sirius feels his knees wanting to buckle for the pressed-close warmth of Remus’ body making his blood stir. When Remus moves just so to bring an involuntary sound of pleasure from Sirius, he pulls back to examine Sirius’ face from very near with proud assertion in his eyes.

“What?” Sirius breathes, humor blushed with arousal just like his skin and feeling very targeted indeed under Remus’ stare.

“Nothing,” Remus replies as, alongside a thrill that skates through Sirius’ pulse, he lowers himself to his knees. “You just look extremely happy.”

“Fucking cheers, I wonder why,” Sirius blurts with notes of laughter as Remus starts working at the fly of his trousers.

“Happy Christmas, Pads,” Remus murmurs before sliding the rasp of denim down to Sirius’ ankles and mouthing at the still-clothed length of Sirius’ cock. Sirius just barely holds in a yelp of surprised stimulation and he scrabbles for purchase on the desk behind him. Remus’ eyes snap up shortly at the sound of a stack of papers being nudged.

“Be careful with those,” he admonishes, but the gravity of it is lost almost completely for the juxtaposition of his position midway through the motion of removing Sirius’ pants.

“Oh I’m sorry, not my fault you have a bloody oral fixation and can’t be patient enough to get ourselves to the bedroom _holy fucking Merlin’s wand—”_ Sirius babbles before he bites down on the edge of his hand as Remus licks him from tip to hilt and back again without warning.

“I said _be. Careful,”_ he repeats in a low voice.

“Fine,” Sirius replies, slightly hoarse for the surge of blood to his pelvis. He rests his hand on the back of Remus’ neck and draws a tender thumb across his cheek in half-mocking. “You can suck me off and I won’t ruin your new domain.”

“Was that so difficult?” Remus says sweetly, and he must know Sirius has a king’s ransom of snark readied just behind his tongue for his attention shifts directly back to Sirius’ cock without giving him a chance to fire back. The expertise of Remus’ tongue washes out the present; all that exists is his attentive touch and feeling of his hair between Sirius’ fingers.

Sirius tries to stay as quiet as possible, roguishly obstinate until the end for the fact he knows Remus loves it best when he’s vocal, considers it his mission to make Sirius gasp and groan and chant his name whenever he takes Sirius in his mouth. Sirius is currently pleased with his ability to hold fast through the steady ramp upward in Remus’ technical offerings, propped precarious against the desk and trying not to knock anything else askew, and he almost says something bitingly witty about the stack of style guides beside him when he feels his tip slide past the threshold of Remus’ nonexistent gag reflex to surround him completely with the slick heat of his mouth. _Fuck._

“Fucking hell, Remus,” He gasps, his eyes squeezed shut, not wanting to look down to see Remus’ inevitable gaze flush with the encouraging tint of arrogant servitude. It would undo him completely—he isn’t done being strung along yet. But Remus has taken up the gauntlet thrown by Sirius’ wild sass, clearly wants to see how quickly he can unravel Sirius’ resolve, so he hums an interrogative around the Sirius’ length that sends a shudder through his skin and lands square at the core of his arousal. Sirius grips white-knuckled at the edge of the desk and does his best not to slide to the ground in a pulsing heap.

Remus pulls back again after a moment to give his jaw a moment’s respite and slick the entirety of Sirius’ cock with the wetness from the back of his throat. “Resilient,” he says simply. His voice is slightly tightened by the residual strain of pressure against his palette. It’s sexier to Sirius’ ears than it has any right to be. “You’ve never been one to resist the fun of prattling on.”

Sirius finally opens his eyes to look down and meet the challenge of that voice, see that stare burning like low and steady embers, before he thumbs once at the curve of Remus’ top lip. “I’m not resisting,” he insists softly, hoping the tremor of arousal stays mostly quiet, “I’m just playing along.”

Remus’ eyes flash once with a mix of mirth and something that looks half-feral. Sirius would be taken aback if it wasn’t exactly what he likes best. Remus returns to the task at hand without another word, and Sirius tips his head back in the renewed ecstasy of taking it.

Sirius does everything short of stammering out a spell to keep himself tethered to the present. But Remus is insistent and Remus is warm, he is immediate and gentle and coaxing Sirius with the lave of his tongue and the gentle pull of his lips, beckoning pleasure like the crook of a finger in the half-light, building tension as he twists his palm, _there,_ to press himself closer with the slightest airy moan as if receiving Sirius’ length is just as lovely to him as the roles being switched, he—

“Fucking hell, Remus,” Sirius breathes with tremulous effort, reduced now to a shaking balance at the lip of the desk on his elbows with his hips tipped dangerously forward for the instinctual press into the wet heat surrounding him. The rhythm along his shaft has shifted just so to a steady and maddening pace, just barely quick enough to finish him but closer, closer, it’s inevitable, isn’t it, this tete-a-tete between Too Close and Too Far Away, like Remus himself—open and closed at the same time, the painful perfection of his heart showing itself in fragments only, even after over a decade of togetherness, like shafts of sunlight piercing through a gap in the curtains— _like—the—_

Sirius’ teeth find his bottom lip with bruising quickness in an automatic response to the sudden force of climax that shudders up through his body, the hemiquaver of release that makes him inhale sharply. He spills in several ebbing pulses, through which he flexes his fingers in the bundle of Remus’ honeyed curls. He lets out a hazy gasp to mirror the sound of approval that Remus hums around him for the graceful completion before, panting and suffused with starbursts at the tips of his nerves, Sirius looks down to laugh lightly through tired breath. Remus, still kneeling, pulls away from him after swallowing and kissing the pale curve of his hipbone. 

“What?” Remus demands genially. He swipes at a glistening dab of saliva at the corner of his lip with one finger to clean it away, and Sirius chuckles again. 

“I give you new quills and you thank me with mouth service,” he sighs, raking a hand through his hair. “I should get you nice things more often.”

Remus looks at him with a leveled gaze for a moment that shines bright with knowing, like a familiar with a secret. “You insufferable fuck, you _are_ nice things,” he murmurs. Sirius’ heart clenches sweetly; he’s quite sure he blushes when Remus smirks with ardor. “Has it crossed your mind in the last seven-odd years that I just enjoy doing it?”

“Oh, _that_ I can tell in spades,” Sirius replies loftily. He buttons his trousers and fusses with the fall of his shirt as Remus takes his turn to belt a laugh.

“Glad to know I’m so readable.”

“Nonsense, you’re enigmatic. And gorgeous.”

“I’ll believe you when you can say it without that expression.”

“What! My face always looks like this!”

Remus rolls his eyes as he shoves Sirius aside gently to re-order a couple things on the desktop, and the smile he tries only halfheartedly to hide with the twist of his shoulder is tender. “I love you, you berk.”

“I adore you. Happy Christmas, you tosser.”

—

_24 December, 1985_

Prodding intently at the little bundle of logs, Sirius feints with a victorious grunt when the spell takes and flames leap to life without warning. He feeds the fire some oxygen with a steady stream of breath before deeming the scene set and rolling back on his heels to stand and brush his hands off on his jeans. The sofa has been pushed to the side so only the area rug remains in front of the hearth—decoration and welcome mat both, but closed off for tonight’s glorious promise of quiet privacy. Remus comes home right on cue. 

“Evening,” he calls from the front door, the bluster of outside evident in the way he sniffs briskly as he removes his scarf one-handed.

“Happy Christmas!” Sirius says, a bright announcement, calling Remus’ attention to note for the first time the shift in the living room.

“Well, one year it’s a dining table and tonight it’s...nothing?” Remus teases lightly. His greatcoat goes to the coat tree and his briefcase goes to the kitchen table, where he takes up a charmed-hot mug of frothed and spiked eggnog that matches Sirius’ own resting on the mantle. He sips from it once and savors the sweet bite of it, whipped cream sticking faintly to the old scar on his top lip as he smirks. “Humor me.”

“Since it’s just us tonight, I figured we’d shut ourselves in with a good, old-fashioned fire.”

“And no way to sit in front of it?”

“Because we’ll be too busy dancing,” Sirius croons knowingly, sauntering to the record player and palming the new Waterboys album like lost treasure to show it off to Remus. 

“You’re more than a bit of a soppy romantic, did you know this?” Remus hums, but it isn’t a protestation so Sirius readies the record with deft swiftness.

“What can I say, I age like a fine wine.”

“You age like a moldy peach.”

“And yet you’re the one still shagging me.” Sirius smirks at his own wit and turns from the turntable to find Remus just over his shoulder, smiling with the quiet triumph of satisfied peace while “This Is The Sea” crackles to its beginning. Sirius opens his arms with the proposition of a dance he knows he’s terrible at but adores all the same, and Remus takes him around the waist to lead the swaying, subtle steps to the center of the makeshift floor. 

As the spice of the opening tune and its subsequent songs track their aimless little dance, Sirius revels in the feeling of Remus’ shoulder beneath his chin and the hint of his heartbeat where they’re drawn close. Sirius has so far seen his first several weeks of 26—he’s getting old, ancient, he’ll be finding greys by New Year. 26 means a whole fifteen years of Remus in his life, and he can’t be mad at _that._

“You’re thinking, I can tell,” Remus murmurs, not breaking stride. Sirius sniffs a wry laugh against his neck. 

“Novel, isn’t it?”

“What’s got you, love?”

“...I’m getting old,” Sirius insists, but it’s a cover-up of the truth beneath the matter. He’s growing up and his perspective is as well, reaching taller to see farther and catch hints of darker things he never wanted to think about again. Government bullshit, errant stories on the radio that make his marrow hum with bad memories, hushed facts from James about interrogations and trials alike, the snake bed’s a-rising, hell, he has to fairly _lie_ to his best friend lately in order to feign excitement that James is on track for an Auror position beyond clerking by quarter two next year. _They need more bodies on the field, Moody recommended me by name,_ eager Potter behind his flashing glasses—Sirius never has the heart to quip back that bodies on the field often become bodies underground, or does he forget Hallows Eve? It would be too cruel.

Shit. It’s Christmas. _Stop thinking, you twit._

“Look at us then, two of a kind,” Remus croons, leading Sirius into a shallow dip before wrapping him in close again. “My shoulders ache when a moon gets close and if the old folk translations of my brethren are to be believed, I’ll need a cane by 30.”

“You’re not old, stop it,” Sirius admonishes him lightly through the rind of a chuckle. 

“Then neither are you,” Remus says gently. “I never thought we’d come to this, but Sirius Black is being told to calm down by Remus Lupin. Lord have we rubbed off on one another.”

Sirius doesn’t quite have the muster for an innuendo at that, so he tucks himself closer to Remus and breathes him in steadily. They dance, if one can call idle and lovely swaying dancing, and gradually sip empty the eggnog that’s long gone cold.

“I adore you, Moony.” Sirius feels his whisper tickle at the skin just behind Remus’ ear, and Remus passes him into a lazy twirl before kissing the inside of Sirius’ wrist with slow purpose. 

“You’re still thinking, Pads,” he hums. “Quit thinking.”

“Make me,” Sirius replies, and while he’s sure to couch the two words in the plush shell of sauciness, he knows the moment they lock eyes Remus can tell he’s afraid. Afraid of a future Sirius never dreamed of seeing, afraid of their wealth of ardor for how quickly he’s seen that happiness can be rent away with the pain of loss, afraid— _terrified_ of what will happen as Remus continues to stride alongside him through life because as perfectly wonderful as this is, men and women like Remus don’t live past quarter-life. It shocks Sirius with how hard it all hits him in a moment, and shocks him again and quietly with how quickly he smooths its wake over behind his eyes. His repeated challenge still comes out slightly tremulous; “Quiet this fucking hurricane for me.”

Remus’ responding smile has the briefest taste of sadness at its edges, but when has Remus Lupin ever done anything without a hint of melancholy? It is, after all, what makes Sirius keep falling in love with him month after month, day after day, second after bloody second in this patchwork present. He tugs Sirius close to kiss him as _You wanna turn your back on your soulless days; Once you were tethered and now you are free, Once you were tethered, Well now you are free; That was the river, this is the sea—_ the turntable the only sturdy sentinel and officiant willing to see this union for what it is and always has been throughout the years. Sirius responds with the appetite of one sitting down to a warm drink after hours in the cold. 

“Come on then, cur mutt,” Remus says sweetly as they lead one another to the bedroom, fall into sheets that smell of summer and pine, lose the need to harrow over the future in twists of muscle and skin and breath. They dive into one another as if there is no need for air, and Sirius finally feels his mind shut off as the five-sense envelopment of Remus overtakes him. 

Yes, it is Christmas, but it is also almost a new year. Change, no matter how poorly he adapts to it most times, has always been a good thing for Sirius. The seasons will spin onward, the celestial bodies will continue to turn, the tracks to and from the hearth will continue to wear their invisible grooves in space; life will continue on. Looking up at the ceiling, Sirius curls Remus close to his chest in the gentleness of evening as the record finishes itself out into the blank vinyl hiss of _Well? What Next?_ If it were all up Sirius, this moment would suspend itself in time and grant the blessed deliverance of nothing but Remus’ steady breathing.

_What next_ indeed.

 

_—fin—_

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaaand I've finally contributed to the Christmas fic wave! Hahahaha my favorite season for these two~ p.s. European Christmas is celebrated more often than not on the 24th instead of the 25th. Happy holiday(s)-to-which-you-ascribe, enjoy your families and/or chosen families!! Thanks again for reading <3


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